He's Just Not That Into You

          This romantic comedy immediately begins to affect the viewer’s emotions in its first scene.  Almost every girl, including myself, grew up being told that a boy picks on you because he likes you.  Now I don’t know if this is true or not, but that thought is forever in the back of your mind as you go into middle school and on further to high school.  The trailer immediately draws the attention of women specifically. It shows the subject of love through comedy and what girl doesn’t love a good romantic comedy??

 The trailer connects with the viewer by showing the complicated side to dating.  It illustrations women getting nervous and not knowing what to say, technology’s complicated role and the mind games that seem to always play a part.  It draws in an audience that has had a crush, dated and/or been rejected. Sounds like just about everyone! Although romantic comedies tend to attract a more feminine audience, the trailer depicts many scenes from the men’s point of view.  In doing so, men may focus more on the comedy side of the movie. 

My favorite movie genre is romantic comedy. Although that alone could convince me to go to this movie, the trailer did a fantastic job in connecting with the viewer as much as possible.  One strong attribute of the movie is the wide variety of actors.  In Understanding Movies, Louis Giannetti explains that, “Once a role has been cast, especially with a personality star, the essence of the fictional character is already established” (282). In the trailer of He’s Just Not That Into You, the viewer can get a vague idea of what the characters are like by the actors chosen for the parts. Bradley Cooper could bring in a vast majority of women because of his good looks and past roles, while Scarlett Johansson does the same for many men. 

In Everything’s an Argument, Andrea A. Lunsford states that, “We actively shape what we see and have learned to see things according to their meanings within our culture" (446).  Visual elements of the movie trailer help support their goals of bringing in a wider variety of people.   Each actress, being famous, shows a different type of woman.  Visually, there is a busty blonde who begins to fall for a married man and an uptight married woman that feels her marriage slipping. They didn’t forget the confused red head that takes every action into consideration, as well as the journalist who cannot seem to technologically organize her life.  Each woman can somehow relate to one of these characters whether it’s through their looks or the status of their relationships with me. Many women see one of the roles as something they’ve experience at one point.

With each role of these women, there is a complimenting male role.  By showing many different types of relationship from the men’s point of view, men are not stuck watching a movie all about women.  Romantic comedies often only attract women and the trailer, in my opinion, did a good job attracting a wide variety of audiences. While it has a direct effect on women, it did show the men’s side of each story as well.  

Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVlqVHKn2dg